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What You Need To Know
About Musical Form
Chord progressions come in sections,
like one room in a house. You can put several different
rooms together to make a big house, or you can live in a
one room house. Just like people. In most 3rd world countries
people live in one room houses -- which means, of course,
that much of the world lives in one-room houses.
 Those
of us who live in the West generally live in multi-room
houses.
But
there  are
also musical houses -- we call them songs-- that
are built out of several different rooms -- several different
chord progressions. Some of them, like mansions and castles,
go on and on and get quite involved.
But most songs are like many modest houses -- they have
2 or 3 rooms, sometimes 4 -- built using 2 or 3 or 4 different
chord progressions.
Each
"room" in a musical house is called a theme, or a "motif."
The first theme is always called "A." The next theme is
called "B," the next theme is called "C," and so on. Most
songs only have 2 or 3 themes, but these themes often repeat.
For
example, let's say we have a chord progression that goes
like this:
C
Am7 Dm7 G7
...and
then it repeats those same 4 chords...
and
then we have another chord progression that goes like this:
Gm7 C7
F Fm7 Bb7
Eb G7
...and
then the first chord progression is used again as the song
ends.
This
song would have a musical form of A, A, B, A -- main
theme, repeat of main theme, contrasting theme, main theme.
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Theme
Theme
Contrast
Theme
This
form is known as A
A B A musical form.
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If
the song went like this:
Theme
Contrast
Theme
...it would be known at A
B A musical form.
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The
"B" section of a song is sometimes called the "bridge,"
or the "release," or the "chorus." These terms usually mean
the same thing -- depending upon the form used.
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Can
you guess what this might be called?
Theme
Contrast
Theme
Contrast
Theme
Contrast
Theme
Contrast
Right
you are! A B A B form.
This is also known
as
"verse-chorus" form.
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Most
popular songs fall into one of these forms:
A B A
A
A B A
A
B A C
A
A B A
B
Why
should you care?
Because if you know songs are constructed this way, you
can look at songs with smart eyes -- you know what
to look for, and once you determine the form, you have a
" mental map" of the song -- you're not just wandering from
chord to chord anymore.
In addition, most songs are proportional. That is
-- 4 bars of section A, then 4 bars of section B, then another
4 bars of section A, and so on. You will find TONS and TONS
of popular songs that are 32 bars long in A
A B A
form -- 8 bars of theme A, 8 bars of theme A repeated, then
a bridge of 8 bars, finishing with 8 bars of theme A.
Does that give you
an advantage knowing that?
It gives you a HUGE
advantage because you know what to look for, and you know
that if you learn theme A you have automatically learned
75% of the song! All that remains is to learn the
8 bars of the bridge, and you've got it!
And
that's why you need to learn about form.
In
this series of lessons we obviously can't get into music
theory and harmony any deeper because of space, but you
could do yourself a huge favor by taking a
course in theory and harmony.
Click here
to find out how much you could benefit from knowing all
that!
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